A Letter From The Editor
Family Vacations —
One Part Joy, One Part Imagination,
With Just a Pinch of Pain
T
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his is the time of year when I miss
my parents the most, probably
because growing up, this was usually
the time of year when we would
pack up the family car (as opposed
to my dad’s hot sports car) and head
west for The Great Annual Brown
Family Summer Road Adventure. My
parents loved the American West;
they loved to travel and loved to take
us with them on their adventures.
I don’t know a lot of parents who
take their children on long road
trips very often these days, but my
parents saw road trips as important
educational experiences, as well as
a way for our family to spend time
together away from the stress of work
and school. He was right. My father
usually was.
My father always had great
stories about the history of whatever
town we breezed through. Example:
Passing through Clyde, Texas, he’d
point out the house used in filming
the Paul Newman movie Hud. Then
he would share details of the real
story of the place. In Gordon, he’d
tell us the story of the fire in the coal
mine. Passing Ranger, Texas, he told
the story of the oil well that won
World War I, and the coal mine fire
in the next town over. But, his stories
went far beyond Texas. In Leadville,
Colo., he told us the story of Mollie
Brown, the woman that saved people
when the Titanic was sinking.
He showed us Donner Pass,
Truckee Lake, and told us about the
settlers who tried to take a shortcut
and how it didn’t go well, a group
of American pioneers who migrated
to California in a wagon train from
the Midwest. Delayed by a series
of mishaps, they spent the winter of
1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra
Nevada. Some of the migrants
resorted to cannibalism to survive,
eating the bodies of those who had
succumbed to starvation and sick-
ness. My daddy’s stories were always
lively and entertaining — they were
also true.
In Flagstaff, Ariz., we had dinner
in the dining room of the Holiday
Inn Hotel, where the hostess looked
exactly like Barbra Streisand; she
even dressed like her. I was just a
kid, so as she led the way to our
table, I piped up with a compliment
to the pretty lady. “You look just like
Barbra Streisand, but I guess every-
body tells you that. Right?”
She stopped in mid-dining room
and her blue eyes flashed and she
replied, “No. Never. Everyone tells
me that I look exactly like Sophia
Lauren.”
My mouth flew open and my
brother laughed out loud. My parents
shuffled us off to our table.
In the dining room was a huge
oil painting of a beautiful lady with
dark wavy hair and cobalt blue eyes.
The brass plate beneath her picture
said, “In Loving Memory of Linda
Darnell.”
I was fascinated by the portrait
and wanted to know the story behind
it.
My mother told me the story, at
least the version she’d gotten from a
magazine article. Linda Darnell was
a famous actress who starred in a
number of films in the ‘40s and ‘50s,
including Forever Amber and Letter
to Three Wives.
She was labeled “The Girl with
the Perfect Face,” but she had died
in the spring of 1965 at the age of
41, from burns she received in a
house fire while visiting a friend
and her friend’s young daughter at
their home in a Chicago suburb. She
had received word from her agent
of three possible movie contracts.
She was thrilled and eager to return
to Hollywood. She never made the
journey. She died from injuries she
sustained when the house burned.
She was trapped on the second floor
of the home by heat and smoke,
as the fire had started in the living
room. Firefighters had seen her stand-
ing at a second-floor window, but
she had vanished from the window.
Firefighters found her later, barely
alive, downstairs near the sofa where
the fire had started.
It was surmised that she went
looking for her friend’s daughter, in
an attempt to rescue her.
The young daughter was rescued
from the second-floor window ledge.
Darnell’s friend stood on a window
ledge, calling for help and was
rescued by firefighters. She had lost
track of Darnell. “The Girl with the
Perfect Face,” was transferred to the
burn unit at Chicago’s Cook County
Hospital with burns to 80 percent of
her body. She died a day later.
After her death, a man who said
he was Darnell’s fiancé identified her
body. A coroner’s inquest into her
death ruled that Darnell’s death was
accidental and that the fire had start-
ed near the living room sofa and was
caused by a cigarette; both women
were smokers.
Darnell’s body was cremated;
her wish was that her ashes would
be scattered over a ranch in New
Mexico, but because of an ownership
dispute among the landowners, her
wishes were never carried out.
Her ashes remained in storage.
Years later, her adopted daughter
had them interred at the Union Hill
Cemetery, Chester County, Penn.,
in the family plot of her son-in-law.
Linda Darnell was honored with a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
at 1631 Vine Street.
A longtime friend of Linda Darnell
owned the hotel and he placed the
portrait of her in the dining room in
honor of the actress.
From the time I heard her
story, I insisted on having dinner
in her dining room, every time we
would drive through Flagstaff, Ariz.
Sometime my family would accom-
modate me and other times they
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